


city continues on, alone

by burnttongueontea



Series: time, as a symptom [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Adam-turned-them-human AU, Angst, Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Aziraphale-centric (Good Omens), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, I cried writing it so be warned, M/M, Mortality, Nostalgia, South Downs Cottage (Good Omens), in this AU Aziraphale is brave enough to sell the bookshop and I stand by that choice, this fic is about the specific experience of grieving for a place tbh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-03-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:33:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23110045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burnttongueontea/pseuds/burnttongueontea
Summary: Aziraphale finds himself obliged to spend a week in London.It's been a while.A free afternoon in London. That’s a rare gift. And on a weekday, too, when everything will be quiet. He’ll have hours to himself, private and uninterrupted. The perfect time to do some of the things he daydreams about now and then, back in the cottage.‘Bugger,’ he says, out loud.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: time, as a symptom [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1577767
Comments: 9
Kudos: 36





	city continues on, alone

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is part of a series imagining how Aziraphale and Crowley’s retirement might have looked, if Adam had decided to make them human when he restored reality. Mostly the fics work as standalones too. They all have soft and gentle endings, but some contain more mortality-related angst than others – so please do check the tags before choosing which ones to read!
> 
> This one's been sitting almost-finished in my drafts for actual MONTHS.

Roadworks. London’s always been roadworks. Since the first dirt tracks got trundled into the earth round here from repeated overuse, people have been trying to do stuff to them, and holding up traffic to do it.

Roadworks and building sites. Noisy, chaotic. They all come with apologies now, big signs with completion dates and mock-ups of the beautiful new developments to come. They all promise that they’re only a temporary surface blemish; that the real London is still under there somewhere, waiting to be restored to her proper splendour.

But Aziraphale knows. He’s been around long enough to know. The rubble-filled holes and the workmen drilling and the constant reconfiguring and the groaning-while-you-wait: that’s it.

That’s all the London there is.

*

It’s nice, to be on a bus. Watching the world go by. Even if the bus is currently languishing in a queue of traffic some forty minutes from the place he wants to be; it’s nice.

Aziraphale reaches down to the bag at his feet and pushes it carefully, just to make sure it’s tucked in as far as it can go. He can already see a crowd of people waiting to board at the next stop, and he doesn’t want anyone to be put off from taking the seat next to him.

They pick up the influx of new passengers. An elderly lady in a beautiful green sari sits down next to Aziraphale. (He smiles at her, just briefly. Receives stony indifference in response. He’s really in London.)

The bus moves off, and then takes a left turn that he isn’t expecting it to.

He waits patiently for quite a while, full of faith that it will turn back, that they’ll come around another corner and he’ll recognise the path it’s taking. It doesn’t, and it doesn’t, and it keeps on not doing it.

Eventually he has to accept that the route must have changed. He presses the bell, disembarks as soon as the driver lets him, and then stands on a street corner, wondering where he is precisely and how he’s going to get to the conference venue. Could flag down a taxi, but he’s put together a budget for the week, and that’s certainly not in it.

In the end he remembers that he can use his mobile phone to search for a route. And that he should probably have done so in the first place, like all the other humans these days.

Instead of just assuming that he knows his way around.

*

 _I’m not getting old in Soho_ , Crowley had said, the first time they talked about any of it properly. He was joking, of course. But he’d also made the joke immediately. Right off the bat.

And, truth be told, hasn’t Aziraphale done it already? Watched the paint flake off the shop sign and be refreshed and flake away again, too many times to count. Endured Heaven, pleaded to Heaven, given up on Heaven, all while his floorboards darkened slowly, picked up dents. Fallen in love and not known what to do and floated nearly away; come back down and been re-anchored. Bought books, sold books, bought the same ones back again. Noticed every single business that opened or closed in that tight little network of streets, for centuries.

He’s over six thousand. He’s nothing if not old, really.

My side, your side. Your place, my place. In the end, you need an _our-place_. In the end, you need to start over. You might as well make it a clean break.

The truth is that Crowley, while he’d never admit it in so many words, _needed_ to leave London.

Whereas Aziraphale, well.

Aziraphale didn’t want him to have to joke about it more than once.

*

He’s been back, of course. Crowley might return more often – just gets in the car and pops up for a meeting, for a particular shopping need, for this and for that – but Aziraphale goes, too. Only when he needs to, and only for as long as he needs to. These days, he passes through the city on a tightrope: eyes on his objective, not looking down, not hesitating too much.

Now he’s here for a week. That’s different. You can’t stay on a tightrope for that long. He’s tried to arrange as many errands and meetings as he can fit in around the conference, but even within a busy schedule, there’ll be dead time. There’ll be unaccounted-for minutes, where you do nothing but sit listening to what’s going on around you, even if you try not to.

A week is enough time to start feeling the rhythm of a place again. He’ll remember things he’s forgotten.

He’ll stop. He’ll look.

*

A couple of packed-out Tube connections later, and he’s where he needs to be. Once the porter has let him into his hotel room at the venue, Aziraphale goes to the window to see his view. Smiles. Taps on the glass once or twice.

‘Do you see that building across the road?’

‘Yes?’ the young woman replies, uncertainly.

‘Did you know it used to be quite a popular gentlemen’s club? Back when it was first built, that is.’ He stares across at the familiar stonework thoughtfully. ‘Nearly a hundred and fifty years ago, now.’

When he turns away from the window, he sees that the porter is giving him a totally blank look.

‘Cool,’ she says. She says it in a perfectly friendly, perfectly well-meaning way.

‘Well,’ says Aziraphale, still smiling. ‘That’ll be all, then. Thank you for your help, my dear.’

*

He fills up the cracks in the first day with endless tedious small talk, between presentations. Recommended preservation practices are changing; recommended ways to exploit an online presence are changing; booksellers in themselves, in their scrutinising airs and their cut-glass accents, are not. In the evening, he carefully invites some new acquaintances to share dinner with him in the hotel restaurant, and carries on ordering wine with them after the meal is done. He can’t say he enjoys the conversation much, but it’s late before he goes back up to his room, late enough to drop directly into bed and shut the door on consciousness immediately.

The next morning he feels like damp laundry that’s been left in the washing machine for too long. Somehow he _always_ forgets about that bit.

Besides which, his finger is distracting him. It distracts him all the way through the first talk. Aziraphale managed to tear it open on a zester on Sunday night, trying to help Crowley make chilli-and-lime dressing for their last supper before the trip. He wrapped a plaster around it neatly when he woke up this morning, but the plaster has been missing in action since breakfast, and it’s starting to look a bit angry. Not sore, just throbbing and warm.

Aziraphale rubs absent-mindedly at the torn skin with his thumb, while waiting for the second talk to start. He’s trying not to think about Crowley and his first-aid mania. The little box in the bathroom cupboard packed with antiseptic wipes and soothing creams, and the gentle, insistent way his fingers go about inspecting an injury.

‘Oof, I’m exhausted,’ says the woman next to him suddenly, in the way that people do when they want to start a conversation, but aren’t sure how, so pretend you were in the middle of one already. ‘Exhausted, I can tell you.’

She’s fanning herself a little, slumping back in her seat. Aziraphale is familiar with the rules of the game, and steps seamlessly into the pretence of familiarity.

‘Yes, I feel quite the same. Stayed up past my bedtime, I’m afraid.’

‘It isn’t even that. Couldn’t sleep _enough_ , last night, after all that rushing around. No, it’s this city. Old bag like me, it just wears me out. Doesn’t it wear you out?’

‘Actually,’ replies Aziraphale, ‘I used to live here.’

‘ _Did_ you?’ she asks delightedly, as if having lived in London is truly a remarkable characteristic in an English(-seeming) man. ‘Oh, well, no hardship for you to be in town, then. All the old haunts, eh?’

‘Indeed. Although I’ve too much business to do much haunting on this occasion.’

She nods understandingly.

‘Whereabouts did you used to live?’

‘Not so very far from here, in fact. Soho.’

This gets the dubious reaction it usually gets.

‘Gosh,’ she says. ‘That’s an… _unusual_ place to call home.’

‘It’s not for the faint-hearted. But you know this trade.’ Aziraphale gestures towards the price catalogue in his lap. ‘Where else could you want your first shop?’

As he points, his neighbour notices the damage on his finger. She leans in to get a good look at the torn skin – humans have always liked doing that sort of thing – and winces performatively.

‘ _That_ looks nasty,’ she declares, with the air of a connoisseur. ‘How’d you manage that?’

‘Over-zealous with my zesting, I’m afraid,’ he replies, pressing his thumb back over it.

‘Ouch.’ She tuts. ‘Well, I wouldn’t fuss at it like that, if I were you.’

He slides the hand into his pocket. He feels chastised. Technically, he supposes, she’s been at this human business for longer than he has. Still, it leaves you adrift sometimes. Six thousand years of a job that did no good for anyone; and now here you are, after all of it, needing correction like a child. Grateful for someone who knows what they’re doing.

*

As soon as the programme of talks breaks for lunch, Aziraphale finds himself leaving the venue, abruptly and alone. Keen for a change of air.

The weather is fresh and bright, which is a relief. Inside the rarefied atmosphere of the conference, nearly every face is pale, crinkly, and bespectacled. Out here, they’re young. The miracle of London is that no matter how old it gets – how long it’s been here – it’s _always_ young. Filled with an upswell of harassed parents and baby-faced professionals and runners running as if the next marathon could strike at any time. He never knows where they come from, all these young people in London. He supposes they must have grown up from the children in the playgrounds, and grow into the frail old couples throwing crumbs for pigeons. But they always seem to him to be the same ones, swapping fashion for fashion as the years go by, and never changing.

There’s a small Marks & Spencer’s across the street, on the ground floor of the smart office building that used to be a gentlemen’s club. He doesn’t get his lunch from there. Instead he comes across a falafel stall, where they hand him a pitta stuffed to bursting with salad. He eats it, with difficulty, on a bench in a nearby park. Yoghurt sauce drips onto his hands, and shreds of red cabbage fall onto his front, and it’s all too effusive to defend himself with the measly single napkin he was offered. He thinks people must be watching him make such a mess, but when he glances around, no-one is.

He gets a little lost in people-watching, and cuts it fine making it back for the next presentation. There’s only just enough time to wash his hands in the bathroom, and double-check himself for spills and crumbs. He almost misses the start.

*

It’s Wednesday before he feels homesick in earnest. He lies flat on his back in his hotel room, feeling the night progress, hour by hour. He thinks about how much he would like to hear the sound of someone swearing irascibly about nothing in the next room, or the buzz of some sort of trash on the TV. He fantasises about getting up to make himself some cocoa, that particular brand they brought back from their holiday in Belgium, and clattering around the kitchen until he succeeds in provoking the highly predictable complaint that he must be waking the whole village. Here there’s only silence, and the far-away rush of the traffic down at street level. The bed feels very serious, very stately. Not welcoming.

He wonders, if he called Crowley and asked, whether he would come up and keep him company here on his last night in the hotel.

He thinks that he probably would. They could make an evening of it, do dinner.

But he won’t ask.

*

On Thursday, he meets an old friend for lunch. Well, sort of an old friend. Giovanni owned one of the other bookshops on his street in Soho. That made him the competition, and definitely not the sort of competition you trust enough to invite in for long evenings quaffing a good red.

They meet in a very nice little French restaurant right by the conference venue, a place he never really frequented enough while he lived here. It’s still just as it was, right down to the dusty plastic flowers in the middle of the table. Giovanni claps Aziraphale on the arm when they find each other.

‘Well, well, well! Fell himself. What a rare treat this is.’

They sit, order their food. The waiter brings them a basket of bread while they wait. Aziraphale tries to bring the conversation on to business as fast as possible, but Giovanni won’t have it, waves his shop talk away with one-word answers.

‘Now, you tell me. How’s life in the sticks? I can’t believe you’ve gotten away with avoiding me for this long. Just look at you! Good grief! Whatever happened to the portrait in your attic?’

He always was direct.

‘Comes to us all,’ replies Aziraphale impassively, buttering a piece of baguette.

‘Well, it’s a relief to know you’re human after all. And very nice to see that devotee of yours is taking such good care of you, too. I don’t suppose _he’s_ gotten fat, the bony bastard?’

Aziraphale’s knife slows slightly in its movements. He puts it down, and slides the butter dish back into the centre of the table. ‘Not that I’ve noticed.’

The years have done their best with Giovanni, too, but found their efforts stifled. His dark, classically-Italian hair is still dark, but it isn’t natural anymore; his clothes are newer and more trendy than they used to be. Too trendy. This is a man who fights it, tooth and nail. Giovanni takes a sip of white wine, puts his glass back down on the table, and grins at Aziraphale.

‘We still talk about it, you know – you riding off into the sunset like that, after all those years. Is it as blissful as you thought it would be?’

There are certain people who could ask this question of Aziraphale, and receive a truthful answer. _I never used to picture anything being blissful. I never thought I would be allowed this, what I have._

To Giovanni, he says: ‘Yes, quite.’

‘Good. Good! Gives you some faith in humanity, to see things work out for once. Right, then. Let’s talk books, shall we?’

‘Please.’

‘Now, I wanted to start by finding out if I could _possibly_ come by and see your little rustical backwoods shop sometime in July… I’m going to be down in Brighton, is the thing, on the… oh, what weekend was it?’ Giovanni starts diving around in his pockets for something. After a few moments of fruitless rummaging, he grimaces in frustration. Hair dye can’t refresh the memory, Aziraphale supposes. ‘That’s a bloody pain! Forgotten my diary. Sorry, we should have just done the meeting at my place. Everything would have been on hand.’

‘Not to worry,’ Aziraphale says. He picks up the jug, pours himself another glass of water. ‘You know, it’s turned out to be such a busy week. I just don’t think I’d have had time to get myself over to Soho.’

*

On his way back from the restaurant to the conference, he thinks again about calling home. _How fast can you get here, do you think? How soon can you be in my hotel room, with your hands on me, with your voice in my ear? How long do you need, to get me to feel fearfully and wonderfully made?_

He attends a roundtable discussion about Amazon’s latest incursions into the second-hand market.

*

And now it’s Friday, and it’s almost over. The conference finishes up by midday, one last speech, but he has a few more things to attend to before he leaves town. He’s arranged to speak to his solicitor at her office, because the human condition always seems to entail such a mind-boggling number of legal considerations, and later on he’ll be popping in to see his longstanding tailor. His annual appointment. He’s been looking forward to that.

He’s walking through Highgate when his telephone rings in his pocket. He’s still not quite used to being constantly reachable, and the sound always gives him a slight sense of panic, as if each trill is chasing more seconds away from him. He’s assuming it’s Crowley, caving in and requesting one of his intermittent confirmations that Aziraphale is not lost/suffering/dead/upon death’s doorstep. Instead it’s his solicitor, with a long and complicated story about a child taken ill at nursery and a dash home and the need to rearrange a thousand things last minute.

The upshot being that there’s no meeting this afternoon, nowhere for him to be. He has nothing to do, now, until his appointment with the tailor at five.

A free afternoon in London. That’s a rare gift. And on a weekday, too, when everything will be quiet. He’ll have hours to himself, private and uninterrupted. The perfect time to do some of the things he daydreams about now and then, back in the cottage.

‘Bugger,’ he says, out loud.

He should go to the British Museum. He should go and feed the ducks in St James’s Park. He should get himself afternoon tea at the Ritz; browse his favourite delicatessens until he finds fine cheeses or truffles to take back home; buy a newspaper and read it front to back in a warm dark coffeeshop somewhere.

‘Bugger, bugger, _bugger_ ,’ he continues, shaking one of his fists just a little.

He hails a cab. Asks to be dropped off in Soho.

*

He’d sold it to a nice, enterprising young woman wanting to open a woodwind shop and teaching space. It was not the best offer he had, not by a long way. The estate agent hadn’t been satisfied at all. But Aziraphale had spoken to all the buyers, and he had made a decision, and he had calmly refused to be talked out of it.

Crowley, who only missed an opportunity to tease the former angel over futile moral scruples about once a century, had smiled and said not a word. He knew Aziraphale knew, anyway. Aziraphale who knew Soho better than anyone else ever has, or ever will. Who had watched things change around him on that street for long enough.

You get to hand the keys over once. So, you do it right. You set a nice, enterprising young woman out in a little boat on rough seas, and you send your blessings with her – for what they’re worth, these days.

You hand over the keys, and then you let it be.

*

The appointment at the tailor’s that evening goes off well. In a few weeks the new shirts will arrive; something lovely to look forward to, the fragrance and feel of fresh linen when he gets dressed in the morning. The journey is smooth, too, the train half-empty as it speeds him away from London again.

He feels quite cheerful, really. A taxi drops him off outside the cottage around nine.

He takes the downstairs key out first, and slips into the darkened bookshop. Just to sort one or two things out before bed.

It’s quiet in there, it always is. No intruding traffic noises, no street hubbub. The air smells gently of old paper, and of the furniture polish Crowley likes.

He really does feel fine.

Aziraphale opens his suitcase and goes from shelf to shelf, carefully replacing the books he took along with him, and finding homes for the new ones he’s brought back. 

Then he slips on his reading glasses, and sits behind the counter with the laptop, logging his new acquisitions. He shifts a few numbers about on a few documents. Idly checks the sales records, to see how his business partner got on in his absence.

After forty-five minutes or so, the business partner appears in person, wearing pyjamas and socks.

‘Thought I heard you coming in.’

‘Hello, love.’

They exchange a quick kiss of greeting, and then Aziraphale turns his attention back to the laptop.

‘Trip okay?’

‘Yes, fine.’

‘You coming upstairs to tell me about it?’

‘In a bit.’

He hopes Crowley will leave then, but instead he just puts a hand on the back of Aziraphale’s chair and stands there.

Aziraphale glances up, which is a mistake, because it turns out Crowley is watching him in a worried way, with an expression that says: something’s wrong.

It’s like looking into a mirror. Positive feedback loop. He feels his own blasted face go crumpling up childishly, reporting the same message back but louder. _Something’s wrong._

He raises his hand to cover the expression up, instinctively. Crowley catches him by the wrist, stops him from doing so.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Complete rubbish. Tell me.’

Aziraphale leans to the side slightly, rests his head against Crowley’s middle. He shouldn’t get upset. And if he tells Crowley, he’ll get upset. He tries to draw in a deep, calming breath, but instead he trips up on the air, and on its way back out it forms itself unbidden into three miserable words:

‘[It’s a Pret.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pret_a_Manger)’

‘Oh,’ says Crowley, unbearably gently. ‘You went.’

‘You knew?’

‘I always go past. Just to have a look. Didn’t know if you’d seen or not.’

‘I wish they’d have demolished it.’

Crowley sighs, and puts his fingers in Aziraphale’s hair, stroking gently.

‘No, you don’t. It’s still living. People are using it.’

‘Yes, to sit and stare gormlessly at their telephones and waste thousands of paper cups – ’

‘Hey,’ he interrupts, slightly sharply. ‘It’s not yours anymore, okay? Everything’s here.’

Aziraphale reaches his arms out and clutches Crowley’s waist, turning his face in to the soft, well-worn pyjamas. ‘I know.’

They’re quiet for a few moments, and then Crowley asks:

‘You’ve already had dinner, right?’

Aziraphale shakes his head, wordlessly.

‘Well, I made a fish pie. Some left, if you’re hungry.’

He doesn’t move, not from refusal but from lack of capacity.

Crowley reaches over and shuts the laptop for him.

‘Come upstairs, angel.’

Then he unhooks the arms from around his middle, takes hold of Aziraphale’s hands, and pulls on them gently until he can’t help but stand up. And it becomes clear that he _can_ move; _can_ walk up the stairs and find himself in this home that he loves, making cocoa and talking about the conference; _can_ still carry on, keep going, and let it be.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. I promise the next one will be much more fun (and therefore a better coronavirus stress antidote: hope all readers are taking care and doing okay!).
> 
> I know lots of people headcanon that Aziraphale would keep the London bookshop open even after moving to the cottage, and that's perfectly logical, but also [puts hand over heart] you know when you _know_ it's time to leave a place behind? Yeah... yeah.
> 
> Wrong city, but the title comes from Karen Dalton, [via Joanna Newsom](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuFxRam8-FA).  
> The fic was actually inspired by Sapokanikan, though. [Look and Despair](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ky9Ro9pP2gc).


End file.
